


apparently this flight of stairs

by pettiot



Series: Dragon Age II Kinkmeme [9]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Stream of Consciousness, alternative universe, at the expense of one's soul, heterosexual marriage saves all, no chantry boom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22677163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: Anders moves in.  Hawke gets married.
Relationships: Anders/Hawke, Fenris/Anders, Fenris/Hawke, Hawke/OFC
Series: Dragon Age II Kinkmeme [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619464
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	apparently this flight of stairs

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt which had a spurned Anders running to Fenris.

  


After four weeks Leandra greets Anders on his customary late arrival to breakfast with her customary embrace, smiling cheek ghosting not quite against the stubble, and suggests over the dishes that perhaps Anders would prefer the suite of rooms downstairs, with the compelling sunlight and the door which opens directly to the garden court, because he seems like a man who values his independence. Thankfully Anders takes to the rooms like a cat to a box, mumbling about the fantastic sun on his writing desk and now he doesn’t have to disturb Garrett with the pacing and the muttering and the occasional fits of sobbing in his sleep, how thoughtful of Leandra, no, really, Hawke, really. When Garrett goes courting he clenches a rose in a mocking grin because if he has to mince down his own bloody stairs in his own bloody house bought by his sister’s blood just to get fucked he is doing it in style, but the rose falls into the dark by Anders’ bed and Anders is not there but at the clinic, the note says.

After three months and several increasingly disastrous dinner parties Leandra quietly suggests that perhaps Anders should not attend. Yes he is an acknowledged part of the household and yes she bears as much affection for him as for her only surviving son and yes he will always have a role in Garrett’s life, but obviously Anders is finding the dinner parties so terribly boring if he feels compelled to bring up the contemporary situation between mages and templars in Kirkwall, and she is sorry the usual Hightown gossip is so far beneath him, but really, Anders, really, do you think it’s appropriate for discussion over dinner? Down the flight of stairs Garrett goes with his stomach curdling just like the cream of Kirkwall, where Anders looks at the clothes laid out, the olive silk robe and the midnight shirt and trouser suit with the high collars that always made him look startled, with his hair wet and loose and smelling like bath and cheeks clean-shaven. Well, love. At least I don’t have to worry about what to wear. 

Garrett rolls him into the broad bed, pulls him into the warmth between his thighs, says fuck me so I can’t forget it all night long, come so deep inside me I bloody well taste you in my mouth when I sit down. But Anders fucks him the way he always does when on top, lazy, rolling in and out of Garrett like a tide, until Garrett comes like a sneeze, relief unknotting his balls but doing nothing for the knot inside his skull, with not even a wince left to cherish when he stands to leave, silk robe and midnight shirt rumpled on the floor and Anders in the bed with an arm across his eyes and fingers cramped as if around a quill and maybe he really is asleep, Garrett thinks.

When even Sebastian’s diplomatic cheer fails to ease the insults Hawke resorts to stealth, stalking the halls when he hears Anders’ name on the painted lips of the daughter of some Orlesian struggling with a canape. Well it might have been romantic four months ago I mean the Champion shacking up with an apostate? Have you read what he writes oh Maker don’t or be hanged for possession! The templars would have tranked the poor sod if he was not within the Champion’s protection and if you ask me that is exactly what he needs right between the eyes. Do you remember when Lord Hawke used to try to bring him here I shouldn’t laugh but oh I would be laughing so hard behind my teeth. Why couldn’t Hawke have an affair with someone darling and sweet like that beautiful elf Lord Oberther has? Kelin? Kyrin? He knows his place when it’s not in old Obbie’s bed even helps out with the children Elenia says she wouldn’t have a moment of peace without him. Cream of Kirkwall yes indeed and oh Hawke imagines uncloaking himself in the midst of the gaggle, bowing with his glass of champagne, I wouldn’t offer you fine ladies even a lick of my piss wet dick if I found you dying of thirst in the dust and I with all the wells in the world. 

But Garrett imagines a lot of things: Anders burning and Anders Tranquil and Anders losing this last piece of himself to the cause, Garrett imagines losing the cause that he cares for almost as much as Anders, Garrett imagines all the things he might do in vain and confesses his horrors into Anders’ nape in the middle of the night when he will not wake to hear; Garrett loses tears like blessings into the abundance of blonde. Forgive me beseeching forgive me but power is the only way and I must be in power if change is to happen, you see?

Anders sees. Nine months later and just before the wedding Anders tells Garrett he sees perfectly, because Hawke is nobility now and the last of his line, bad enough Hawke compromises his chances for advancement by picking for a lover someone who wasn’t that much of a social asset. Yes there’s the clinic work and Hightown loves the charity lovers but that was petering out now and after all foreign refugees weren’t exactly the best of causes; hope and pray they never find out about the underground, huh, Hawke? Everyone knew Anders’ only real asset to the household was that he had enough of a life of his own to stay out of the way of whatever wife comes along, you can count on that from me, Hawke. Garrett listens in astonishment as his mother’s unspoken words come out of his lover’s mouth and in shame and fear he rages, destroys a statue, shreds Anders’ mattress on the side which Hawke never gets to use, shut up Anders, I love you, that’s not why I’m doing this, I love you and you love me, and they can all go fuck themselves, that’s what we agreed that was what we wanted don’t ever think I don’t want you but I want to change things too and there are always sacrifices, always.

Anders says with the sky roaring in his eyes and his mouth, right, sorry, I misunderstood, thank you for wanting me Hawke, and the sex on the shredded quilting is like being fucked by a tempered beast so slow and deep with feathers all a storm around them, and Garrett crawls back up the stairs hoping his mother doesn’t wake, doesn’t see him, hadn’t heard them, a solid chunk of flesh missing where shoulder met neck and Anders’ slow mouth had not forgiven him any more than his cock had, oh help him but coming had been like shooting stars into that loving brutal palm.

When Garrett returns after the three month honeymoon in Orlais Anders stands with the others, Bodahn and Sandal and Orana, with Leandra and the two new elves she found to tend the garden, Anders who accepts Leandra’s introduction of Anders, excessively long pause, the house physician, Anders who kisses the new Orlesian bride’s glove with his face freshly clean of stubble and hair still wet and neat in its queue, while she laughs sweetly and says, a physician oh how convenient, with an excessively long pause, I have heard such tales of what Garrett gets up to, if the Qunari ever return it will be most useful to have you close. Do you know much of the problems with childbirth and early infants? 

More than enough to assist you, mistress, Anders says, with his politeness as slick as his hair, and Anders tells Garrett later without emphasis, the mage resistance has fallen, just in case you still cared. 

Garrett destroys himself temporarily. Anders stops writing. 

One evening soon Fenris comes, because Garrett will not go to him.

Displaced in the mansion as a blood soaked rug, where even his polite learned bow in greeting makes the armour groan and the sword clang like a dying distant bell, the sheer smell of him filling the room with presence and life, that cloud of leather and blood and angular spite. The wife steps back against the stair with her eyes wide and her manners momentarily shocked from the lush lips, at the tension radiating from the hunched shoulders and the coiled core, and it takes Leandra to fill the shocked spaces with an offer for wine and a gesture to the chair which Fenris never takes and if her lips never say it Hawke knows Fenris hears it, those elf friends of yours are rather strange, aren’t they? 

Fenris, who sounds like a resigned old man these days when Hawke misses the raging desperate youth who pinned him against a wall and kissed him. Fenris, who would never care for politics or sacrifice anyone for something perceived worthy, because Fenris judges everyone as lacking and nothing as important as life. 

Hawke, Fenris says, I need your help.

Then there is a battle and a dead magister and a dead sister and a life torn apart anew, and Fenris demands answers and new memories and curses Garrett’s ability to simply create a new life from the rubble of the first, look at you lush as a magister fat as a well fed pigeon you and your fucking abomination I hope the Viscount’s seat pinches your arse, which is so sad and pointless Garrett laughs hysterically. Because apparently there is no one else for Fenris to curse and call for help in the same breath, one overarm action threatening to sacrifice the last aggregio against the wall, the eyes begging Hawke to stop him.

Garrett catches the flexing wrist, holds the hand, tells Fenris, no. Garrett tells Fenris, what gives you the right to think it would ever be easy. Garrett tells Fenris, it never gets easier don’t you understand it never gets easier only you get tired and stop caring and all you can do is go on, because there are things greater than yourself and your own pain and when it’s all over, no one will even remember who you were, only what you did for them. if. you. are. lucky. And because Garrett is not lucky Fenris softens in his hands, all that muscle to liquid lyrium pouring over him like a tide, says you poor fool, both of you poor fools, you truly believed you could make history and find happiness, too?

Fenris, who does sometimes remove the spiky armour, whose hard arms do less than embrace but more than hold, who tastes like leather and blood and lyrium, tainted old sweat and dark, dead things, who sounds even more like an old man hollow and deep when Garrett licks at the shining crease of his thigh, the length of the leftwards leaning cock showing all the character of Fenris’ crooked smile, where Garrett delivers small drenchings of well aimed spit so Fenris can thrust the once, motion long and lean as he is and Fenris smiles sweetly as a child.

The notes Anders leaves are blank as the walls. As the absence in the sheets of their separate beds. Don’t question me Garrett don’t ask me Hawke I do what you can’t because I do what I must.

They do what they must. 

Eventually even Meredith turns to Hawke for help. 

This flight of stairs, the key to the city, Kirkwall’s endless flights of stairs, and at the top what Garrett and Anders never call the Viscount’s throne.

Kirkwall could be a very different place if you could remake it, Anders tells Garrett, tells Garrett he still hopes, even with his smile distanced across the endless flight of stairs.

Garrett spends too much time at the Hanged Man. Anders spends too much time in the perfect sunshine of his room. The wife spends too much time arranging flowers and making political friends behind the battle scenes, and the house is always full of people. Garrett tries. She could be an ally, Anders. She could be the friend we never had but always needed, the skills we never learned, and Anders agrees but still the bed is empty when Garrett goes down the stairs. Merrill and Fenris and Varric and Isabela take turns walking Garrett home just before dawn. Aveline is the only old friend who is welcomed by the wife, if with a pleasure Garrett finds amusing in realising his wife’s ambitions match his own. After witnessing her conspiracy to ingratiate his name, no, their name with the Vaels he finds reasons to keep Sebastian close, which only sends Anders further.

Leandra is happier than he has ever seen her, even with Malcolm. I never needed that old courting game anyway, she tells him, it makes me happy seeing you so happy instead my son my darling boy.

Merrill gives him perspective, Varric gives him benchmarks, Fenris gives him wine and knowing looks, Aveline gives him fucked up blood magic murderers to hunt and kill, but Isabela gives him hope. Isabela says just don’t ever go to bed angry, and if the bed is the problem then don’t go to bed at all. Garrett takes Anders picking flowers for the local specialist, and they rut against each other in the mud, earth turning to stone when Anders fists his hands in the dirt and moans, Anders who tastes of storms and musk and something bestial, the best and worst of dreams, Anders who burns without fire inside him like a demon, Anders who lies on his back under the stars with his chest bare and his dick, which seems to shrink every time Garrett goes anywhere near his arse but which stretches near straight to the navel otherwise, his hands on Garrett’s hips and saying, love, oh love come here, take me in you, that’s it, all the way, now take me home. 

Anders who gives the spare collected flowers to the household wife with apparently a smile. She invites him into the parlour for tea and social indoctrination and discussion about where to get him some new shirts and appropriate conversational starters in the contemporary style, and this is the calm before the storm, Garrett supposes.

In the second year, Garrett starts sleeping in Anders’ bed because it hurts him to see it empty. The wife comes to him in the dark after Anders leaves for whatever he does and she fucks Garrett there, on his back in Anders’ bed without even a candle or the moonlight to tell their faces, only her hands and his hands with blonde still caught in the creases, and Anders never knows except that Garrett can’t sleep there any more can’t come down that flight of stairs any more, ashamed to have fucked his own wife in his lover’s bed.

The wife falls pregnant.

Anders does know enough about childbirth or at least healing to keep the baby breathing and the wife from bleeding to death. Hawke wonders how to thank him for that, this life in his hands with her all seeing eyes warm and forgiving as homeland mud and mouth full of noises and unformed skin covered with a fine down of blonde hair. How to thank Anders, because the gossip Hawke hears now when stalking Hightown from the shadows suggests his name for Viscount. He is not the dog lord, not the refugee, not the new money. He married the Dumar cousin. Kirkwall is his.

Or apparently theirs.

Garrett gathers his courage and a whole bunch of roses and goes down the flight of stairs to find Anders is not there, and this time more than the bed is empty.

I need your help, the note says.

Garrett says to Fenris, I need you to watch him.

Because the wardrobe is empty and the old roses are gone and Anders’ pleas to an unheeding world are ashes in the hearth. Because Anders is planning something, and only Fenris could ever had stood against him, made to kill mages. But Fenris is wary and Anders rages in the empty clinic, you don’t trust me Hawke you never trusted me maybe you never should have trusted me; I’ll prove it to you, I could have always done this alone I am always alone.

Garrett tells him in anger, you have never done anything alone, where would you be if it wasn’t for me. 

Anders says, apparently living in a Darktown slum but a flight of stairs beneath your mansion, Milord Hawke.

And baby Hawke is mumbling, baby Hawke is crawling, baby Hawke is walking and is not a baby any more, and Garrett can only remember his dreams when she sleeps on his chest, small breaths against his neck and hands moving against his chest hair and through the shared dreams her new astonishment at the texture resounds.

Garrett attempts the flight of stairs and further to the clinic, but even there he finds the beds are bare.

Then it is more than years, and his only acceptable friends are Sebastian and Aveline and half a hundred nobles who never held a sword and never deserved the chance. 

Because he is starving in this feast of fools, Garrett goes in the dark and in stealth to Fenris, who wears the sword like the brands, immutable.

The mansion door hangs decrepit off its hinge like a drunk and does not warn when Garrett enters still cloaked, and the only light is the angular spill down each stair. In the room at the top of the flight where Fenris smashes memories against the walls, Garrett looks through the absent door and finds Anders’ books now fill the spaces, dried old roses with bitten stems fill a whole window sill full of empty bottles, Anders and his abundance of blonde unbound and years untrimmed across the shoulders, ink staining his cuffs, seated at a new old desk with a fire burning blue and cold as stars in the hearth. Unsteady, half clad and hungry, Fenris prowls like a beast around the perimeter, lap after lap stepping carefully through the wine fogging his feet, dragging the mouth of a bottle across the walls as he walks, a prisoner drumming the bars of his cage, until the glass shatters with a bang.

Anders never flinches, and Fenris’ beseeching eyes never leave Anders alone. 

This broken mouth Fenris brings to his forearm, and the sight and smell of ribboning blood is bright and startling. Mage, Fenris says unsteadily, child and hopeless man and Garrett gave them to each other, these two wrecks of beings, what has he done, the slave and the magister; mage, Fenris demands angrily, mage, see what I have done to myself. But Anders does not put down the quill until Fenris goes to him, decorates the aging parchment with his blood, mage, do you not want to use me, mage, until Anders takes the hand and puts his mouth to the wound, blood and lyrium painting the lips, and both of them are as beasts with Anders’ eyes empty as fair skies and Fenris’ eyes gone black with lust. Mage, Fenris says and tries to free his hand, and Anders says what, what is it, do you want me to heal you?

But Fenris calms, shakes his head as if through a cloud.

Do you need my magic, Anders tries, gently. 

Like breath, Fenris begs. 

Anders says, or do you need me?

Like blood, Fenris breathes. 

Like breath like blood in my veins I need you, Fenris pushes Anders and chair away from the desk, takes Anders to the filthy floor with the uncut hand to his throat and blood pooling in the cupped fingers of the other. Anders smiles at the cobwebbed ceiling, and the lyrium brands light to Anders’ magic, vein by vein, plucked like strings by the longfingered hand of an artist, until Fenris lies curled with his head on Anders’ chest, racked and moaning low and warm with an ecstasy beyond age. Their kiss is as obscene as the fucking afterwards, with Fenris pouring wine over Anders’ cock and the bloodfilled hand stroking him to streaked fullness, a decadent futile ease when Fenris sits to sink with hurt and moaning, and Anders says with his red lips and sky filled eyes, you need me, yes, inside you, yes, you need me, tell me, like breath like blood, tell me, my breath my blood.

Garrett descends the stairs in silence and climbs his own stairs, looks at his daughter sleeping in her bed, fingers in her mouth and blonde curls on that crown, and thinks about what happiness means.

One day Fenris comes to him with shadows under his eyes and a mouth bruised with kisses, a hitch in his stride and purring voice, I have watched him most carefully, Hawke.

Garrett knows. 

Fenris tells him, Anders means to destroy the Chantry.

Hawke thinks and sees and says with relief, you should take him away from here, my friend.

Fenris does not thank him.

One day comes the day the junior Hawke escapes her grandmother’s watch and runs to her father, in his study where he does not sit on the Viscount’s throne because yes it pinches his arse to numbness, with her warm eyes and wide smiles, saying daddy look what I can do daddy, and she holds out her hands with a storm cupped and crackling between her fingers.

Hawke can smile (cracking) and marvel (numb), because this is his Kirkwall, bought by blood that was not shed, and he would lose everything (again) to keep her safe.

  



End file.
